Powered by the very latest battery technology, this could be the car of the future.

The battery uses lithium-polymer materials, making it lighter and more efficient than any other, according to its developers DBM Energy.

Swen Streubel converted this car to run on the so-called Kolibri battery to demonstrate its practicality. One charge and 450 kilometers (279 miles) later he says he couldn’t be more satisfied.

“This is no miracle. We have all of the components which are available in the car and in theory we can show that it is possible to travel via electricity today and that it is suitable for daily life.”

Most electric vehicles lose their luggage space to the batteries. Not so with the Kolibri. And inventor, Mirko Hanneman, thinks the cost of the new battery will not be issue.

“We don’t think that the costs for the car will be high. We expect that the car, if we were the manufacturer, would not cost more than a similar fuel-run model.”

The Kolibri battery hit the headlines for the wrong reasons when its record-breaking trip of 600km on a single charge was criticized by Germany’s automobile association, which had concerns about the nature of the test – not the technology.

As Klaus Reindl, spokesperson for the German Motoring Club explained:

“The car was out of the eye of journalists for longer periods of time. The whole thing was not transparent and that is what we criticized back then.”

But despite the alleged lack of transparency, they have no doubts about DBM’s achievement or the battery’s performance.

The Kolibri is due to undergo a series of road tests later this year and could yet revolutionize how we travel in the years to come.

Bottom line: A German company has developed a battery-powered electric car capable of driving 450 kilometers (279 miles) on a single charge. By comparison, the Nissan Leaf has a range of 160 kilometers (99 miles) per charge and Chevrolet’s Volt, about 70 kilometers (43 miles).

Comments (7)

Maybe it is worth to mention that the DBM energy test vehicle has a battery capacity of 63 kWh whereas the Nissan Leaf uses a 24 kWh battery. Seems quite logical that the DBM vehicle drives further.
Lithium Polymer is nothing new, they exist for over a decade now (i.e. Kokam). Well, so much for the truth.

Logical, but not unremarkable if it’s cheaper and/or more dense than the Leaf battery. Miles per Kwh is mostly related to the efficiency of the vehicle. If you have high mkwh you have a smaller car/better motor etc.

The energy storage capacity of DBM’s solid-state Kolibri system appears to be a breakthrough, having perhaps 3x greater energy storage capacity within the same size & space of the more widely used LiO batteries.

As an experiment it would be interesting to substitute a Kolibri solid-state battery for the LiO battery in a Nissan Leaf and learn if the Kolibri battery greatly increases the Leaf’s maximum range.

The demand of electric cars have been rising on top, the Volt and Leaf are at its best. Cruze is the best-selling vehicle by brand in America in 2011, and the demand of Volt will be increased in 2012, it is the best vehicle to go out on summer time vacation.

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